RE:MH baler

Alan,

I'm afraid I only have my school boy "O" level French which is extremely tarnished! So I'm afraid you'll have to seek help elsewhere.

I think I have a French Pony parts book somewhere so I'll try and search for French spanners. I refuse to call them wrenches because as far as I am concerned a wrench is an adjustable for pipework usually, or for gripping a stubborn or rounded nut/stud!

RE:MH baler

John,

I don't know if this is the right thread to be discussing this but this spanner/wrench thing is interesting.

i was born and brought up in Hampshire. There a spanner was a spanner but when I moved to Norfolk they became wrenches ( which was the first time that I had heard them called wrenches) especially among the older folk. They are called spanners here as well but of course our friends the other side of the pond call them wrenches.

RE:MH baler

Alan,
Perhaps one shouldn't get too pedantic about these things but the Oxford dictionary gives a spanner as:
"tool for turning nut on bolt"
and a wrench as:
"violent twist or oblique pull or tearing off, tool like spanner for gripping and turning nuts etc"

So perhaps my interpreation is not too far off spanners for the normal applications and a wrench for mor violent work!

So what have N Americans to say on the matter? - and indeed those from down under.

Perhaps you can put those funny folk in Norfolk on course correction and pack them across the Atlantic!!!!!!!

RE:MH baler

Well only yesterday I had two visitors from New Zealand viewing my collection, we discussed this spanner / wrench debate at length and they too call them spanners!! so I understood what he was talking about from "way down under".

That is one very interesting piece of M-H machinerydetailed on a nice piece of literature.

RE:MH baler

I dare say that the term "spanner" would never have entered our vernacular over here were it not for our good friends from across the pond. Who knows how/when/where that change in terms came to be, but suffice it to say it happened well before my days on this earth!

One question: When it comes to the left-handed, metric, adjustable "wrench", would you guys still call that a spanner?!? :-)

For that matter, I have always thought the term "spanner" was best suited to the "adjustable wrench" as it could "span" across several bolt head and nut sizes...

Yes? No??

Massey Exposition of North American at Paisley, Ontario, Canada is coming right up!

RE:MH baler

John,

At the risk of upsetting today's modern day engineers all I can say is that metrication was an unecessary abomination and absurd imposition on the whole of humanity. After all, you folks got to the moon using yards, feet and inches. Metrication was supposed to make our yougsters more arithmetically competent but in this regard it has been a disastrous failure. Metrication has brought about a generation of arithemetic no-hopers simply because they don't have to think as much i.e. dumbing down - the curse of the modern world.

As for a left handed metric wrench - well anything metric deserves to be wrenched!

Metrication was of course good business for spanner makers and contributed somewhat to inflation no doubt. I suppose too that the Joe's of this world benefitted from scooping up bins of redundant Imperial measurment spanners!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RE:MH baler

I have two adjustable spanners/wrenches which are indenticle. One made in Europe one in North America. The only difference is the adjusting wheels turn in the opposite direction. So which ever one I pick up I always turn it the wrong way first time.
We are coming over to Canada on 10th August and will at the sale and the Expo on Friday and Saturday so hope to meet you all there